Reminders
by Qoheleth
Summary: How poetry entered the life of the Community, and what came about as a result.
1. An Unexpected Voice

**Disclaimer: **To Lois Lowry, _The Giver_; to their respective authors, the reminders; to some unknown photographer, the cover image; to me, the tale I will thee tell.

* * *

It was a day much like any other – as most days are, of course, in a Community dedicated to a policy of Sameness. Roughly two months had passed since the disappearance of the young Receiver-in-training; he still hadn't been found, but neither had the troubles of eleven years ago recurred, so it was presumed that he was still alive somewhere. (Inquiries had been sent out to nearby Communities, but none had had any new arrivals from Elsewhere recently.) In any case, the anticipation and dread that had been almost palpable in the Community all through December had slowly evaporated, and life had returned to normal. By the fifteenth of February, no-one was expecting anything unusual – certainly nothing like what occurred.

It happened near the beginning of the afternoon, just as the schoolchildren were returning from recreation. The scene in the Sevens' classroom was typical: most of the students had settled down into their seats, a few were still giggling with residual ebullience, and the Instructor was smiling tolerantly as she waited for those last few to calm down.

Katharine was among those who were already settled in place. She was feeling a bit tired today, and not as energetic as she usually was; she wasn't sure why. Probably her father would help her to understand it at the sharing of feelings that evening, but the truth was that she didn't really mind not understanding it. The important thing about feelings was to feel them, not to think about them.

Of course, that wasn't the way her father saw things at all. He was an Instructor of Fives, and he thought it was very important to think about feelings. "If you don't understand your feelings," he would say, "you'll end up doing some very foolish things because of them." And that made sense to Katharine, but she still thought that it must be all right to just be happy, or sad, or pensive every now and then, without worrying about why. So long as you didn't let it keep you from doing what you were supposed to; wasn't that the important thing?

Well, anyway, right now she was supposed to be paying attention to her Instructor. She straightened herself in her seat, and raised a hand to smooth out her hair ribbons – and, at that moment, the speaker on the wall crackled to life.

ATTENTION, came the Speaker's voice. THIS IS A REMINDER…

And then it stopped – just stopped right there, in the middle of the announcement. It was as though the school's connection to the Speaker's office had somehow been cut off – but it hadn't been, obviously, because the light above the speaker was still gleaming as brightly as ever. And, besides, it hadn't sounded like the sort of stop caused by a broken connection; there was a different sort of sound to the Speaker's voice than when he got cut off in the middle of a sentence. This time, it was as though he had started to make an announcement and then forgotten what he was supposed to say – or, maybe, had suddenly become too afraid to say it.

A chill went down Katharine's spine. She thought of the missing Receiver-in-training, and how everyone in the Community had been so afraid for the future only a few months before; had something happened to bring that fear back?

She glanced at her Instructor, to see if she understood what was happening. The Instructor's brow was furrowed, and she was staring at the speaker in obvious puzzlement, but she didn't seem afraid, which relieved Katharine a bit. She admired her current Instructor a great deal – more, probably, than she admired any other adult except her parents – and, until she showed that she was worried, Katharine was prepared to assume that nothing was really wrong.

But she wished that the Speaker would finish his announcement. The silence was starting to unnerve her – and it seemed to be unnerving her classmates, as well. She saw Ranjith tapping his foot anxiously against the side of his chair, and Beatrice reverting to her old habit of chewing her fingernails. (In spite of the tension, Katharine smiled to herself; Beatrice had been doing very well with that lately, but the stern Childcare worker who checked her fingers every day probably wouldn't give her much credit for that.)

The tension continued to build for perhaps half a minute longer; then the Speaker spoke again, not in his usual, self-important voice, but in a tone of surprised, almost dreamy happiness. YES, he said. THIS IS A REMINDER.

There was a moment's pause, and then new words began to emerge from the speaker – words that were utterly unlike anything Katharine, or anyone else within hearing range of them, had ever heard or dreamed of before.

_I wandered lonely as a cloud  
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,  
When all at once I saw a crowd –  
A host of golden daffodils  
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,  
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze._

_Continuous as the stars that shine  
And twinkle on the Milky Way,  
They stretched in never-ending line  
Along the margin of a bay;  
Ten thousand saw I, at a glance,  
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance._

_The waves beside them danced, but they  
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;  
A poet could not but be gay  
In such a jocund company.  
I gazed, and gazed, but little thought  
What wealth the show to me had brought…_

Here, for a moment, the Speaker seemed to hesitate, as though he had suddenly realized what he was doing, and was unsure whether he dared to let the weird locution reach its end. But the thing, once begun, was not so easily ended; the words rang out once again, even more gladly loud than before:

_For oft, when on my couch I lie,  
In vacant or in pensive mood,  
They flash upon that inward eye  
Which is the bliss of solitude;  
And then my heart with pleasure fills,  
And dances with the daffodils._

And the speaker fell silent once again.

* * *

It was fully a minute before anyone in the classroom moved. Not that they expected there to be more; they knew, instinctively, that the last phrase had completed the Speaker's "reminder". But none of them trusted themselves to move. They felt as though they had suddenly been transported into a dream, and that, if they turned too suddenly or spoke too loudly, the entire Community would dissolve around them, and they would find themselves in some utterly different place. It was, for all of them, a terrifying feeling; for about half of them, it was also a delicious one; and for Katharine, though she didn't realize it at the time, it was the moment when she first ceased to be a Seven.

After a while, the Instructor cleared her throat, and her entire class jumped and turned to her almost in unison. "Well," she said, her voice as steady as ten years' training could make it, "I hope that that was helpful to whomever it was meant for. Now, shall we open our books and resume where we left off?"


	2. Defense of Poesy

So the Sevens returned to Instruction, and their Instructor did her best to impart to them the knowledge that she believed to be suitable and worthwhile. So far as Katharine was concerned, though, it was wasted effort; when she left the school that afternoon, she remembered nothing that her Instructor had said during those last three hours. Her mind was too full of the strange, frightening, wonderful reminder that had broken so mysteriously into her afternoon's routine.

_I wandered lonely as a cloud… _What was a cloud, she wondered? What were vales and hills, what were trees, and stars, and waves? What was a lake, and a breeze, and a bay? Above all, what were daffodils? The reminder had been all about them, and they were clearly important, but Katharine couldn't begin to guess what they were. All she knew was that they were golden – and she knew what gold was, it was a kind of soft metal that you made wires out of. Maybe a daffodil was some kind of a wire – but no, that didn't make sense. Why would you have ten thousand wires all in the same place? And, if you did, they would be too heavy to flutter, wouldn't they?

_Fluttering and dancing in the breeze…_ There was another strange word, _dancing_. There were so many strange words in that reminder – but it wasn't just nonsense, she was sure of that. She knew what it was like to make up words that didn't mean anything; she and all her classmates had spent a day doing it as Threes, as an object lesson in why precision of language was important, and they hadn't produced anything like the reminder. Their words had just been silly; the words of the reminder were…

"Beautiful," she said aloud.

Her friend Ophelia, who was walking home with her, turned and stared at her in puzzlement. "What?"

Katharine jumped slightly; she'd been so occupied with her thoughts that she'd almost forgotten that Ophelia was there. "Oh, nothing," she said.

"But you said something," said Ophelia. "A word, I think. Something about being full."

"Beautiful," said Katharine again.

"That's right," said Ophelia. "What does it mean? I never heard that word before."

"I'm not sure," said Katharine, trying to think where she herself had heard it. "It's what the reminder was, I think."

Ophelia's eyes widened slightly, and her lips grew tight and pursed for a moment. "You probably shouldn't say it, then," she said. "I don't think we should be talking about that reminder." (She didn't ask which one, though there had been several that day.)

"Why not?" said Katharine. "There wasn't anything bad about it."

"Yes, there was," said Ophelia. "It's not the kind of reminder a Speaker's supposed to give. When people do what they're not supposed to, that's bad."

This was very good logic for a Seven of the Community, and Katharine didn't quite know how to answer it at first. But she was sure the reminder wasn't bad, and so she thought furiously in silence for a minute or two as the two of them continued walking. Then, abruptly, she turned to Ophelia and said, "But who was supposed to give the reminder, then?"

"Nobody," said Ophelia with certainty. "It wasn't a real reminder. It didn't mean anything, so it didn't have to be…"

"Of course it meant something!" Katharine exclaimed.

"What?" Ophelia challenged.

"Well… I don't know," Katharine admitted. "But it meant something. Otherwise, it wouldn't be beautiful."

"Stop that!" said Ophelia, sounding irritated. "We're not Twos anymore, Katharine. We're not supposed to use words when we don't know what they mean."

"But I _know_ what it means," said Katharine, helplessly. "I just can't explain it."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know anything that's beautiful except the reminder!" said Katharine. "I didn't even know there was a beautiful before I heard the reminder! And you don't like the reminder, so how can I tell you what beautiful means?" And she dropped her head to blink back a sudden onrush of tears.

Ophelia was silent for a long moment. Katharine was almost afraid to look up at her at first; she supposed that Ophelia would be angry with her for shouting at her, and she didn't like to see her friends being angry with her. When she finally raised her head, though, what she saw in Ophelia's face wasn't anger at all. It looked more like fear – like the fear that had been in her mother's face when she had been a Four, and had cut her hand with the kitchen knife.

"Ophelia?" she said uncertainly. "Is something wrong? I apologize if I made you unhappy."

Ophelia swallowed. "I accept your apology," she said, her voice slightly unsteady for the first time that Katharine could remember. "But I think I should… that is… I want to go back and ask the Instructor something."

"Oh," said Katharine. "All right. Do you want me to go with you?"

"No," said Ophelia, a little too quickly. "No, that's all right, Katharine. You go on ahead, and maybe I'll catch up with you later."

Katharine nodded, and Ophelia turned and walked as quickly back toward the school as she could without actually running. Katharine watched her go for a few minutes, frowning slightly; she appreciated Ophelia's politeness in not actually saying that she wanted to get away from her, but it still made her a little unhappy to realize that that was clearly what she had meant.

* * *

As Katharine turned and continued her walk back to her family's dwelling, she thought about her altercation with Ophelia, and the strange word that had started it. Beautiful. The words of the reminder were beautiful. What _did_ that mean?

It didn't just mean that they were precise, or clear. They _were_ those things, she was sure; even though she didn't know what half of them meant, she felt certain that they conveyed definite ideas, and that nobody who knew their meanings would have been confused about the way they were used. In fact, there were some of them that she saw herself were unusually precise – _gay_, for instance. She'd never heard the word before, but she could tell from the whole sense of the reminder that it meant happy – and a special kind of happiness, Katharine thought: a full, carefree kind of happiness, not about this thing or that thing, but about everything at once. (She wondered if she had ever been gay, or if she'd ever met anyone else who was feeling gay. She wasn't sure, but she hoped she had.)

But the reminder's language wasn't beautiful just because it was precise (though she was fairly sure that, if it hadn't been precise, it wouldn't have been beautiful). There was something else about it that was even more important – which, to Katharine, seemed a strange thing. How could anything about language be more important than whether it was precise? Precision was a measure of how well your words matched your thoughts, and the whole purpose of language was to communicate what you were thinking. What else could words be for?

But it seemed that there was more. Her Instructor's lessons, for instance, were always precise, but Katharine had never wanted to repeat them to herself over and over again, to savor the feeling of them inside her mouth, or to listen to someone else say them and simply delight in their sound. About the reminder, however, that was precisely how she felt; indeed, as she walked along, she kept catching herself whispering portions of it under her breath, even though there was no-one else around to listen.

Maybe beautiful meant that it brought pleasure, then. ("_And then my heart with pleasure fills…_" she whispered.) But no, that wasn't right, either. The reminder clearly hadn't brought pleasure to Ophelia, but that didn't make it any less beautiful. Besides, if something was important only because it brought you pleasure, that meant that you were more important than it was, and that wasn't the way it was with the reminder. The reminder was much more important than she was; if she had to cut her hand again, or run away and never see her mother and father again, so that the reminder could keep being beautiful, that would be the right thing to do.

She shivered at that thought, and hoped that it would never become real. Maybe Ophelia was right to be a little afraid of the reminder, and not be sure whether it was good for the Speaker to have given it. Maybe it was dangerous – or not dangerous, exactly, but too important for just anyone to hear. The Elders were probably wise enough to know about it safely; it wouldn't change their lives, or make them unable to do what they were supposed to. But for the ordinary residents of the Community, maybe it was different.

But then the words of the reminder swept back into her mind, and she laughed aloud at her own absurdity. Clearly, if she could think such things, she still didn't understand what it meant for something to be beautiful. How could it be bad for someone to know about something beautiful? Everyone should know about something beautiful. In fact, the best thing would be for everyone and everything to be beautiful – but she didn't suppose that could ever happen. Which was too bad.

And now she was almost to her dwelling. As she hurried the last few steps down the path, the door opened and her mother came out, a worried look on her face. "There you are, Katharine," she said. "Are you all right?"

Katharine smiled, and nodded. "Yes, Mother, I'm fine," she said.

Her mother glanced vaguely down the path. "Where's Ophelia?" she said. "She's usually with you when you get back."

"She went back to ask the Instructor something," said Katharine.

"Oh," said her mother. "Well, I hope that didn't upset you too much. I know how unpleasant it can be to be left alone."

Katharine shook her head. "No, I didn't mind the solitude," she said.

She hadn't meant to use that word, but her mind was so full of the reminder that it slipped out before she could stop it. She winced, and wasn't really surprised when her mother paled and licked her lips. "Yes, well, you'd better come inside now," she said. "Dinner's almost ready, and we don't want… dinner's almost ready."

Katharine nodded, and solemnly climbed the steps to the door, wondering what she was going to do when they reached the sharing of feelings.


	3. Something Huge and Smooth

As the door of Katharine's dwelling swung shut behind her, another door was opening in the small Annex behind the House of the Old. The Receiver of Memory, to whose living area the door belonged, raised his eyes from the book he had been studying and smiled softly at the tall, elegant woman who entered. "Welcome, Marilee," he said.

The Chief Elder returned his greeting courteously but mechanically, her eyes straying to the rows of books that lined the walls of the room. She had called upon the Receiver several times during her nine and a half years as leader of the Community, but never had she felt as ill at ease in his quiet sanctum as she did today. There was something intimidating, suddenly, about all those mysterious volumes; it made her think how large and old the world was, and how much there was about it that she was not permitted to know.

The Receiver's soft voice broke into her thoughts. "What did the Speaker tell you?" he asked.

The Chief Elder blinked, and recollected herself. "Very little," she said. "He had never heard the words of the reminder before, and doesn't know where they came from. All he knows is that, at 13:47 this afternoon, he was compelled to activate the speaker and proclaim them to the Community."

"Proclaim?" said the Receiver.

The Chief Elder nodded. "That was the word he used," she said. "I suppose he meant 'announce', but one can't insist on precision of language at such a moment."

"No," said the Receiver thoughtfully. "Perhaps not. But was that really all he said? Did he, for instance, say anything about how it felt to be… compelled?"

"How it felt?" the Chief Elder repeated.

"Yes," said the Receiver. "Was he frightened? Confused? Ashamed, perhaps?"

The Chief Elder shook her head. "He didn't tell us that," she said. "I suppose he must have been frightened; wouldn't anyone be? But we didn't ask him. We…" She hesitated.

"Yes?" said the Receiver.

"The truth is, we didn't ask him very much at all," said the Chief Elder. "To do so seemed unkind, almost rude. It was quite clear that what had happened wasn't his fault, and none of us were anxious to make him more uncomfortable about it than he already was."

"Did he seem uncomfortable?" said the Receiver.

"Well… no," the Chief Elder admitted. "He was quite composed, in fact. But he must have been uncomfortable, mustn't he? To have something like that happen to you, and to be unable to explain it, must surely be as discomfiting as anything can be."

"Must it?" said the Receiver gravely.

The Chief Elder didn't know how to respond to that, and, after a moment's pause, the Receiver continued. "Suppose that you, Marilee, were lost somewhere far from the Community. And suppose that, just as you were becoming very distressed and lonely, an enormous hand were to reach down out of the sky, pick you up from where you were, and put you down again right in front of the Auditorium. How would you feel then?"

This seemed to the Chief Elder to be sheer nonsense, but she had sat on the Committee too long to doubt the Receiver's wisdom. After a few moments' effort, she succeeded in imagining the situation that the Receiver had described; after a few moments more, she was ready to answer him.

"I suppose," she said slowly, "that I would feel confused by what had happened, but very happy that it had happened." She laughed. "And grateful to the person whose hand it was, also."

The Receiver smiled. "Yes, you would be grateful," he said. "Even if you didn't know who the person was, or how he could have done what he did, you would still be grateful to him, and not afraid or uncomfortable. Because you would be sure, at least, that he was good."

The Chief Elder nodded slowly. "Yes, that's true," she said. "But, with all due respect, Receiver…" She stopped, uncertain of how to say what she wanted without seeming hopelessly impudent.

"Yes?" said the Receiver.

"Well… I _haven't _been placed in front of the Auditorium by an enormous hand." As the Chief Elder spoke, a grin crept across her face unbidden; the idea, when put thus baldly, seemed so absurd that it was all she could do to keep from laughing in the Receiver's face.

The Receiver didn't seem offended. "No," he agreed. "You haven't, and I don't suppose you ever will be. It would be a very strange thing to have happen, wouldn't it?"

"Very strange, indeed," said the Chief Elder, still smiling at the thought.

"Almost as strange, perhaps," said the Receiver, "as having your mind suddenly filled with an announcement about daffodils."

There was a moment's pause, then – "Yes," said the Chief Elder. "Almost as strange as that."

"And if the one thing can be good, despite being strange," said the Receiver, "maybe the other can be, as well."

The Chief Elder was no longer smiling. "No, Receiver," she said. "I don't think it can. The idea of the hand was good because the hand brought rescue. Nobody was rescued by today's reminder. Quite the opposite, in fact: people were disturbed, unsettled – the life of the Community was disrupted to no purpose. And what the Committee and I want to know," she said firmly, "is how to keep such a thing from happening again."

The Receiver didn't answer her immediately. His strangely pale eyes had gone vacant, as though he were gazing at something far away. It was an expression the Chief Elder had seen before, each time she had consulted him; it meant that he was drawing on his store of ancient wisdom, and plumbing the world's past for the guidance that the present situation required. She therefore put aside the slight annoyance she had felt with his enigmatic remarks, and waited with patient expectancy for his pronouncement.

"The primordial ooze," the Receiver murmured. "And something huge and smooth…"

This meant nothing to the Chief Elder, but she remained silent. Long ago, when she had been a child, her mother had been continually telling her, "Marilee, don't interrupt your father while he's thinking." (Her father had been a Mathematician; a number of the Community's mechanical devices owed much of their efficiency to his ideas.) She was a grown woman now and the highest authority in the Community – but in the Receiver's Annex, surrounded by his books and waiting on his wisdom, she never failed to feel that same parental stricture that she had known as a Five.

"By what means, though?" said the Receiver. "Is words worth forever, too?" (At least, that was what the Chief Elder heard him say. It surprised her, since she'd never known the Receiver to use incorrect grammar before.)

He meditated for a few moments more, then abruptly raised his head and met the Chief Elder's gaze again. "I advise," he said, "that you assign one of the Elders – Tomas, perhaps – to remain in the Speaker's office with him during his period of work. Then, if he should be seized with such an impulse again, Tomas can observe what happens, and his observations may give us some clues about where this reminder came from."

The Chief Elder didn't trouble to conceal her disappointment. "Is that all?" she said.

"It's all that I can see to do at the moment," said the Receiver. A small smile played about his lips. "Even my wisdom needs something to work with, Marilee."

That, the Chief Elder recognized, was fair enough. "What if the Speaker never is compelled to give another such reminder?" she asked.

"All the better for you, I should say," said the Receiver. "That is what you want to happen, isn't it?"

"Of course," said the Chief Elder, "but Tomas probably won't want to spend the rest of his life watching the Speaker for a loss of control that never comes. How long should we wait before letting him return to his ordinary duties?"

"Ah," said the Receiver. "Now, that is a question." He stroked his beard, and thought for a moment. "I would say that, if there has been no second reminder by the twenty-second of March, there probably never will be. Tell Tomas that he need not keep watching the Speaker after that date."

"The twenty-second of March?" the Chief Elder repeated.

The Receiver nodded. "Whoever or whatever inspired the reminder, I suspect that seasons are important to him," he said. "If he lets the beginning of spring go by without recognizing it in some way, it will be because he has lost interest in us."

"I see," said the Chief Elder. For the briefest of moments, she felt the urge to ask him how he had come to that conclusion, but she suppressed it as quickly as it came. Her job was to apply the Receiver's wisdom, not to seek to understand it.

"I will give Tomas his assignment at daybreak tomorrow, then," she said. "On behalf of the Committee, I thank you, Receiver of Memory."

"I accept your thanks," said the Receiver gravely.

The Chief Elder made a small bow, and left the room.

* * *

The Receiver let out a heavy breath, and reopened the book that lay beside him on the desk. It was a very old book, written in a world that was very different from the one the people of the Community knew; yet, in many ways, it was the most eloquent expression ever made of the virtues that the Community sought by its way of life. The author had nothing but praise for well-ordered living, social usefulness, and clarity of thought; he deplored emotional excess and pointless inquiry. Indeed, it would not have been difficult, the Receiver thought, to present this ancient sage as one of the founders of the Community system; perhaps those who had instituted the Communities, so many generations ago, had thought that they were following his insights.

Yet, all the same, his book was part of the Receiver's library; no other copy existed anywhere in the Community. The Community's past leaders had deemed its contents to be disruptive to the present-day life of the people, and had relegated them to the realm of memory. And rightly so, for, however similar its conclusions were to the Community's, its reasons for reaching those conclusions were utterly inadmissible by those who wished to live as the Community's members did. There were things its author knew – things, indeed, he thought essential to knowledge – that would have turned the world of the Community upside down in an instant if word of them were to spread abroad. And, when the Speaker's reminder had been broadcast to the community that afternoon, it had been to one of these things that the Receiver's mind had flown.

He turned the ancient pages, trying to find the passage again. Yes, there it was: _And is it not for this reason, Glaucon, said I, that education in music is most sovereign, because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained, and otherwise the contrary? And further, because omissions and the failure of beauty in things badly made or grown would be most quickly perceived by one who was properly educated in music, and so, feeling distaste rightly, he would praise beautiful things and take delight in them, and receive them into his soul to foster its growth, and become himself beautiful and good. The ugly he would rightly disapprove of and hate while still young and yet unable to apprehend the reason, but, when reason came, the man thus nurtured would be the first to give her welcome, for by this affinity he would know her._

The Receiver nodded to himself. Such was, indeed, the cause of education in music; he, with his lifetime's experience of hearing beyond, knew it well. And someone else evidently knew it, too, and was using the Speaker to give the Community this most sovereign form of instruction. But who? And how? And, above all, why?

He sighed, and shook his head. It would be the height of arrogance for him, of all people, to pretend that he knew, or could deduce, the answers to these questions. Three months ago, he had deliberately sent Jonas to his death in the wilderness, thinking that he had known how that would affect the Community – and he had been wrong, and his son had died for nothing. After that, how could he claim to understand the workings of his world?

All the same, though, he still had a faint flicker of intelligence left in his old head, and there was one thing about the Speaker's reminder that he was sure of. Wherever it had come from, and whatever had caused it, it was a foreshadowing of something immense – some great and terrible fortune on the horizon, which would call upon all the wisdom he could muster to keep it from destroying the people of the Community. And when it came, he would have to be ready for it.

And, with that thought, the Receiver stood up, shut the book, and went to prepare himself for bed. For no-one can be properly ready for a great and terrible fortune if he neglects his sleep to stare pointlessly at old books.


	4. All through the Night

Katharine didn't neglect her sleep, but it nonetheless didn't come easily to her that night. Partly, this was because of a vague sense of guilt: when invited to share her feelings after dinner, she had avoided the whole topic of the reminder, and had focused instead on her quarrel with Ophelia, attributing this vaguely to "a disagreement about rules". She knew that this wasn't quite honest (though it was perfectly truthful), but she hadn't been able to bring herself to share her really important feelings with her parents.

She knew that was wrong of her. Children had to respect and trust their parents; otherwise, how would they ever become good adults themselves? And she did trust her mother and father. She knew that they were upright, intelligent people, and that they would do anything – within the rules, of course – to keep her and her brother safe. But, all the same, when she thought about telling her mother how happy the reminder had made her, or imagined her father sensibly and meticulously analyzing that happiness until there was nothing dangerous left in it, she knew that she just couldn't do it, however bad a child that made her.

She hugged her comfort object a little tighter, as though, by giving the stuffed zebra a little more of what it ought to have from her, she could make up for having given her parents a little less. Its soft plush fur pressed against her cheek, and she smiled softly, feeling grateful that her Ceremony of Eight was still almost a year away. She needed some extra comfort, tonight.

She wondered what was supposed to happen to her when December did eventually roll around, and her comfort object got taken away. Was she just supposed to not need comfort anymore? Or was she expected to learn, over the course of the coming months, how to comfort herself without any help? That would be all right, she supposed – but it seemed awfully lonely. And how was she supposed to be learning it? Nothing in her Instruction that year had even mentioned self-comfort – at least, not that she could remember. What if she failed to learn it, and wasn't ready to take part in the Ceremony when it came? Would she have to remain a Seven for another year while her friends moved on? Could that even happen, under the rules?

Maybe she was just thinking about it too much. That was one of her bad habits, she knew; she couldn't count the number of times that her mother had said to her, with a laugh, "Really, Katharine, life isn't as complicated as you want it to be!" Which she had always thought was a little unfair; it wasn't that she wanted life to be complicated, it was just that questions kept occurring to her that her peers, and maybe even her elders, never seemed to think of.

She sighed sleepily, and tried to focus on something that wouldn't keep her awake. Something that could just be felt, and surrendered to, like the softness and warmth of her pillow, or the gentle rhythm of her own breathing. In and out, rise and fall… inhale, pause, exhale, pause… _hfff-ffhhh, hfff-ffhhh_…

…_Ĭ __wán-dĕred lóne-lў ás ă clóud_…

* * *

So, eventually, her mind was stilled, and her body (which was still that of a Seven, however strangely precocious the rest of her may have been) drifted into a long-postponed and badly needed sleep. And with that sleep, of course, came dreams.

Not visions, be it noted. None of Katharine's dreams that night came from anything stranger or more supernatural than her own mind and heart. Nor were they particularly symbolic or significant dreams; indeed, when Katharine woke the next morning, she had no notion that she had dreamed at all. They were merely the ordinary mental activity of the lightly sleeping child – the passive drift of the soul along the currents of natural desire.

Why, then, should they be mentioned here at all? Only because the human soul is a stubbornly continuous thing. Time may change its state, but it cannot change its nature; every moment of its being remains united to every other, and, being thus united, necessarily influences and shapes the whole. The poet of the daffodils had known that the child is father of the man; Katharine did not know, but nonetheless demonstrated in her person, that the sleeper is likewise sister of the waking child.

The founders of the Community had known this well; it was the reason they had instituted dream-telling as well as sharing of feelings. It was important, certainly, that waking sentiments be rendered safe and tractable, but this was of little value unless the urges that bore the sleeping mind along were similarly tamed. (Indeed, they had flirted with the idea of dispensing with sleep altogether, but this had proven impractical.) But the sleeper who forgot a dream couldn't be expected to share it, and so Katharine's reveries that night were never brought under the knife of analysis and dissected into their component emotions; they were allowed, of necessity, to abide in their fullness as dreams.

This was, in all probability, a very good thing for the Community. Had Katharine been deprived of the half-remembered images by which her body interpreted the reminders to her mind, it is unlikely that she would have been able to embrace those reminders as readily as she did. She might well have still been unready when the cataclysm came – and where the Community, and even the whole of the world, would have been then, is an unpleasant thing to contemplate.

* * *

So Katharine slept, and dreamed – and, in their various dwellings, the other residents of the Community slept and dreamed as well. As they did so, the restoration that time and stillness bring to living minds was worked upon them; when morning dawned at its appointed hour, they found that the shock and horror of the previous day had been wiped from their souls, and that the memories of what had occasioned it could be seen in their proper light. And, so seeing them, the majority of the residents laughed at their own fears.

What, after all – so they asked themselves – had really happened? A Speaker had made a bizarre and probably meaningless announcement; well, people did do strange things now and then, when stress or personal difficulties overwhelmed them. Doubtless he would be given a period of absence to recover his equilibrium; some other temporary Speaker would be appointed in his place, and the life of the Community would continue as it always had. The wisdom of the Elders, which had preserved the Community for countless generations, would certainly see to that.

So they put the matter out of their minds, and emerged from their dwellings to go about their daily business. They ate and drank; they procured goods and distributed them; the Masons built useful structures, and the Landscapers planted appropriate trees. More personal affairs were likewise attended to; the records of the Spousal Assignment Office, for instance, show that three citizens applied on this day to be given in marriage, and that two pairs of spouses were assigned to each other.

And over it all, an ancient and forgotten power watched, and waited.


	5. Twelve Days After

When Raymond entered his Speaker's office on the twenty-seventh of February, he was not in the best of moods. He was a young man – it was only a few years since his period of training had officially ended – and hadn't yet applied for a spouse; nonetheless, when he had become a full Speaker, he had chosen to leave his parents' dwelling and take up residence near the river, where there were a number of small dwellings set aside for unmarried adults. At the time, he hadn't really considered what that would be like; he just knew that it didn't feel right to him to remain in his childhood family unit any longer.

Which was all very well, but there were days – and that day was certainly one of them – when the lack of familiar voices and comfortable footsteps in his dwelling made him feel curiously aggrieved, as though some possession had been taken from him and nothing given in its place. It was an absurd feeling, he knew; if he really objected to lacking a family unit, why not simply apply for a spouse and have done with it? (Indeed, he had actually written such an application – but then, for whatever reason, he had failed to turn it in. It was still sitting there, in the drawer of his desk in his riverside dwelling, and had been for nearly a month. He hadn't forgotten it, nor had he changed his mind about wanting it – but he had never used it.)

But, whatever the reason for his dissatisfaction, the fact remained that he felt it – and it only deepened when he entered his office and saw the Elder Tomas sitting on a small stool in the corner, smiling paternally at him. He had never liked being watched; indeed, that was one of the things that had made the Speakers attractive to him as a child, the notion of being merely a voice and never being seen. And the Elders knew that perfectly well, and had shown their approval of it through their assignment of him – and yet here they were sending one of their own members in to intrude upon his professional privacy every day for over a month, all because he had said something over the comm that he hadn't been able to explain afterwards.

But, even as he puckered his lips in resentment, the memory came to him of that afternoon, and the wondrous strangeness of the mood that had seized him – as though he had been some useful instrument, such as a chisel or a lathe, and some mysterious craftsman had suddenly taken him up and used him to give new form to a piece of wood or stone. And, remembering this, he conceded to himself that the Elders had good reason to wish to study him – for a worker may well be known by his tools, and who would not wish to know the worker of the reminder?

Reflecting thus, he was able, with great effort, to return Elder Tomas's greeting politely. He then asked whether there were any special announcements regarding the day in general, and Tomas said no. "Confidentially," he said, with the knowing geniality that made it impossible to resent him for long, "the Council never does seem to declare special occasions at this time of year."

"Why not?" said Raymond, curious.

"That I don't know," said Tomas. "It could just be coincidence, I suppose – or maybe there's some sort of seasonal influence that makes people feel solemn and austere. But, anyway, there it is: in all my years on the Council, I've never seen a single unscheduled holiday proposed for the end of February – and only a very few for any time in March."

Raymond cast his mind back, and found that he couldn't remember any such holidays, either. "Well, then," he said, "just the daily grind of purloined snacks and untied hair ribbons, eh?"

"So it would seem," said Tomas with a chuckle.

But, as it turned out, it didn't seem so for much longer – for no sooner were the words out of Tomas's mouth when the comm startled both men by suddenly crackling to life, and the voice of one of Raymond's fellow Speakers filled the room: ATTENTION. THIS IS A REMINDER.

* * *

It was on the tip of Raymond's tongue to make some joke about Tomas having evidently been away from the Council too long, and not being as informed as he used to be about the temper of his colleagues. But the words never left his mouth, because he knew, instinctively and without question, that this was no announcement of an unscheduled holiday, or anything else that emanated from the Council of Elders. The timbre of the unseen voice was that not that of a Speaker doing her daily work, but of a messenger with some great secret to share – in fact, of a chisel about to give form to a stone. And he scolded himself, in that instant, for being arrogant and short-sighted, grumbling about Tomas's presence in his office when it was only his self-flattery that kept the Elder there – for it seemed to him, now, that he ought to have realized, and, realizing, to have told the Elders, that a wise craftsman employs all of his tools, not just one.

So he said nothing, and Tomas said nothing either; they both sat, silent and motionless, with their eyes turned toward the comm, and waited for the unimaginable thing that they knew was about to happen.

* * *

_I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!  
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee,  
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,  
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die._

* * *

It was Charlotte's voice, Raymond realized – the junior Speaker, a few years younger than he, with whom he had had an unspoken rivalry ever since her period of training had ended in November. The Elders regarded her as particularly gifted, with a pleasant timbre to her voice and a knack for elocution; as a result, they had given her a disproportionate number of announcements that, in Raymond's view, ought rightfully to have gone to him. Resenting this, he had on several occasions found ways to make her feel uncomfortable about her relative youth and rawness without actually breaking the rules pertaining to rudeness; she, in turn, had taken to conspicuously avoiding him whenever she could, even turning down other paths when she saw him coming.

It was strange, he thought, that he hadn't recognized her voice immediately. He had thought that he knew it so well; why had it seemed to him, at first, that there was a vivid, mysterious stranger speaking over the comm? Partly, no doubt, because of the different quality that proclamation gave to a person's voice – but he couldn't help thinking that perhaps he had never properly listened to her before.

* * *

_A weariness comes from those dreamers dew-dappled, the lily and rose;  
Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the meteor that goes,  
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in the fall of the dew,  
For I would we were changed to white birds on the wandering foam – I and you!_

* * *

Tomas's lips worked spasmodically as he heard the rattling chains of unmeaning pour forth from the speaker. He recognized Charlotte's voice quite readily; it had been he who had first noted her potential as a Speaker, and had urged his fellows on the Council to give her that assignment. That his success should have caused her to become the helpless vehicle of an incomprehensibly disruptive force – that distressed him greatly.

Something had to be done, he decided. He had known that before, of course, from his general sense of the fitness of things, but now he not only knew, but resolved. He would not permit this to continue; he would not allow the men and women whose flourishing lay in his care to remain at the mercy of something that cared nothing for the Community, or for order, or for sense. What he could do about it, he didn't know, but he knew that, whatever it was, he would do it.

* * *

_I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,  
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more.  
Soon far from the rose and the lily and the fret of the flames would we be,  
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!_

* * *

The comm turned off with a pop, and both men let out breaths that they hadn't been conscious of holding. Raymond started, and glanced at Tomas with a little, awkward laugh; the Elder, however, didn't seem to have even noticed the synchrony. His usually genial face wore a sad, solemn expression, and the thought passed through Raymond's mind that he looked genuinely elderly for the first time in their acquaintance.

He rose slowly from his seat, approached to where Raymond was sitting, and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Raymond," he whispered.

"Yes?" said the young Speaker.

"Raymond," Tomas repeated, a shade more loudly. "Raymond. Raymond. Raymond…" He had said it about half a dozen times more, and had almost reached normal speaking volume, before the man whose name he was murmuring realized what he was doing.

The impromptu ceremony continued for some minutes, at the end of which Tomas abruptly broke off, with the air of one who had done all he could for the present, and turned and went out the door without another word. His footsteps could be heard echoing down the corridor for a minute or two; then they faded away, and, for the first time in nearly half a month, Raymond found himself alone in his office.

Only a few minutes before, such a development would have filled the young man with an almost insolent exultation – but now his soul was altogether too full for such petty triumphs. Instead of rising to his feet and striding about the room with the buoyant gait of the newly liberated, he remained where he was, contemplating the new order that had arisen in his world. He thought of white birds (whatever those were); he thought of daffodils (whatever that meant); he thought of himself, and what he had become not quite two weeks before; and he thought, most of all, of the other who had now become that with him, and who, now that the proclamation of beauty bound them together, could never again be to him the mere obstacle and object of envy that he had hitherto sought to make her.

His lips parted, and, as Tomas had just murmured his name to give him life and strength, so he murmured another name – not to give its possessor life (for that had already been done by one far more qualified than he), but to reach out to the life that had been thus bestowed, and to unite, or accept the unity of, his own life therewith.

"Charlotte," he murmured. "Charlotte. Charlotte. Charlotte…"


End file.
